Beginning with God

A Basic Introduction to the Christian Faith

James W. Sire

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780830845057
• eBook ISBN:
  9780830890965
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Christianity begins with God and ends with God. It is a story for all to know and understand.In this personal and easy-to-read book, James Sire offers a basic introduction to the foundational truths held by Christians at all times and in all places. The chapters are organized around a simple scheme: creation, fall, redemption, new life in Christ, and glorification. In this expanded edition, Sire added a chapter on the person of Jesus.With study questions for personal or group use, this is theideal first book for seekers and believers who want to understand the central teachings of the Bible.

CHAPTER ONE

What’s in a Name?

“Tell me your name and your business,” [said Humpty Dumpty].

“My name is Alice, but—”

“It’s a stupid name enough!” Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. “What does it mean?”

“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.

“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am—and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.”

LEWIS CARROLL, THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

IN EXPLAINING THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, we can begin almost anywhere, for Christianity relates to the whole of life—the outer world of natural science, the inner world of the human psyche, society at large, and individuals in particular. In short, we could begin with God, with people, or with the universe.

We will begin with something quite familiar to us—ourselves. What light does the Christian faith shed on us? Who are we? Or, more to the point, who am I? And, you who read this book: Who are you?

Christianity has an important—even startling—answer to this question. But before we can see just how startling and important we need to reflect. The question, who am I?, has lots of answers, one of the most interesting being your own name. As the first step in a long journey toward understanding the Christian faith, I would like you to join me in a look at what our names tell us about who we are.

LAST NAME FIRST

Take your own name, for instance. What does it tell you about yourself? First, look at your last name, your surname. If your family is Asian in origin, your first name may already be your last name, your surname. Where did you get it? From your father, of course. And he? Well, from his father. This indeed is your family name and represents the continuation of a long family line, a line extending—as amazing as it may seem—to the origins of the human race.

Of course, sometime in the distant past, if you trace your ancestry, you will find your family name disappearing from the records and the records themselves nonexistent. So, though you may soon lose track of your forebears, you are linked to the rest of the human race by biological heritage.

This linkage is just as certain through your mother’s family as your father’s, but the maternal line in the West, at least, is harder to trace. In any case, you are who you are because your father is your father and your mother is your mother. The offspring of any other pair would not be you.

Odd to think about, isn’t it? Who would you be if your parents were different? Certainly not you.

Zen Buddhists ask a marvelously mind-wrenching question when they challenge young monks: What was your original face before your parents were born? Think about it. There is no answer. The question itself is nonsense, for you were not you before your biological origin. God may well have had you in mind—that we will consider later—but you did not exist. Each of us, in other words, is dependent on our parents for our very existence.

Moreover, none of us asked to be born. We exist by the will of others, and they by the will of others still, and some of us were never intended at all—at least not by our parents. We were “accidents.”

What’s in a name? How quickly our calm reflection turns to shock! Our family name links us, for good or ill, to the family of man, to all its foibles, its accidents, its good intentions gone sour, its evil intentions turned good. Our very individual existence seems a matter almost out of anyone’s control, even the control of the agents, our parents, who brought it into being.

It’s a chancy thing, human life, especially our particular lives. Given slight changes of conditions in any of billions of situations down through the ages, I wouldn’t exist, nor would you. But that’s a might-have-been that isn’t.

The fact is we do exist. Each of us is the product of a long line of hereditary characteristics, and each of us is the bearer of many more characteristics that we have the potential to pass on to our children. Our link to the past is permanent and unchanging. We cannot change our parents.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING SIRE

Actually, most of us do not want to change our heritage. Take the long and noble history of the Sire family, for instance! My wife and I once spent two fascinating (for me) days in eastern France, visiting one European branch of my father’s family. Late in the nineteenth century my grandfather, Paul Louis Eugene Sire, emigrated from Neuchatel, Switzerland, and came to the United States. His father, Jacques Eugene, had left eastern France a generation before that and had established himself as a true Renaissance man by eventually becoming not only a watchmaker and taxidermist but also, so I was told, the curator of the museum in Neuchatel. At the age of eighty he was commissioned by the Swiss government to write a French grammar for their school system.

But by 1972 when I returned as the first of our side of the American family to do so, no Sire was left in Switzerland. Even in France only one small family still held the name: Robert Sire with four children, only two of them male. One of my sons has two boys; the other no children at all. The line is thin and close to extinction.

While in Blamont, France, a little village just a few miles from Switzerland, I saw the house Jacques Eugene’s father built. Above the door the proof was etched in stone: C. Sire 1818.

Before Christopher Sire, all is lost in the mists of time. I am told, for example, that Sire is not our original name; that it used to be something like Esquire. But because my forebears were Huguenots (that is, French Protestants) and were subjected to severe persecution by Catholics, they changed their name. So maybe Sire does not really mean what it would seem to mean in French—father—but is short for some other, more dubious meaning.

I do know this. It became very clear while I was there that to be French and Protestant was good and to be German or Catholic was unspeakable. I never told my relatives that my wife’s maiden name is Wanner, too obviously Teutonic. It surprised me, therefore, to be introduced while in eastern France to my fifth cousin—Jacques Schneller.

“Schneller!” I exclaimed. “But that’s German.”

After the shock of my insult had worn off, one of my relatives hastened to explain. “Oh no! Jacques is French. His brother is German.”

Everything hangs on which side of the Rhine one lives on—the French or the German. Obviously, my cousin’s brother (I guess he would be another cousin) lived on the German side. In the Alsace-Lorraine area, long fought over by the two countries, one’s family name does not ensure one’s nationality.

But family names are interesting. They reveal our origins; they testify to our roots in the past; they show that all of us belong on one continent. As John Donne said, “No man is an island.”

I have long been interested in my father’s side of the family. Perhaps that’s because I loved my grandfather. He and grandmother—whom I really didn’t like very much as a child—lived with our family for most of my childhood years. So when I was shown the old family Bible in Christopher Sire’s old house in Blamont, France, I lovingly copied the data on births and deaths recorded there.

Here I traced the joys and sorrows of Great Uncle Louis’s family: Jules Henry (b. 28 Mar. 1870, d. 18 Apr. 1871); Georges Louis Alfred (b. 10 Jan. 1880, d. 18 May 1882); Louise Aline Emma (b. 28 Feb. 1883, d. an infant); Louis Alfred Pierre (b. 18 Sept. 1888, d. 12 Dec. 1916). Those are four of the ten children of Louis Sire (b. ?, d. 22 Jan. 1922). Four of them lived normally long lives. One died at the age of two, having fallen from the second floor of Christopher’s house in Blamont. One, Louis Alfred Pierre, was a casualty of World War I.

I will spare you more details. My family line is interesting to me, not to you. But you, too, have a family tree. If you want to know yourself, you might wish to do some digging.

Ask your living relatives to tell their story of your family. Find out where you came from—the nationality, the ethnic origins in Europe, Asia, Africa, wherever. Does your family name have a meaning, such as Smith (from blacksmith) or Draper (from the weaving trade)? An internet search or books at your local library can help you get started on your exploration.

MIDDLE NAME SECOND

Now take your middle name. A few people in the English-speaking world have none; a few have two or even more. Where does your middle name come from? Not by necessity, but by choice—your parents’ choice. So this, like your first name, is a given name. But you probably will find that it has also belonged to someone else among your near relatives. You were given this name because your parents wanted to honor someone they liked.

Take Walter. That’s my middle name, but it’s my father’s first name. As far as I know, it was never used in the family before this. But it has been used again. It’s the middle name of our second son—Richard Walter. The middle name of my first son is James. Look who got honored that time!

Of course, you may find that your middle name has been given to you for other reasons. Maybe it sounded nice when combined with your first name, like Ann with Mary. Or maybe it was just a beautiful name that your parents might have thought too odd to be a first name.

Maybe it was chosen for its meaning or its allusion to something good and beautiful in the past. Mary is the mother of Jesus. Elizabeth was her cousin and the mother of John the Baptist; another Elizabeth was a great queen, and yet another a living queen.

If your middle name was chosen just for you, then it is a lot like your first name.

FIRST NAME LAST

Your first name (or middle and last name if you are Asian) is truly your given name. This is the one for you and you alone. If it honors a relative, be assured it is because your parents wanted you to be like him or her.

Our first son we named Eugene—not a very popular name for children in the United States—but one that honored my grandfather and my uncle, both of whom I grew up loving very much. I learned later that in the Sire family the name had been used at least once before.

Eugene ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 What’s in a Name?
• 2 Beginning with God
• 3 A Name for God
• 4 The God Who Is
• 5 Man and Woman: The Image of God
• 6 The Bad News About Human Beings
• 7 Sin: From the Inside Out
• 8 God in Search of His People
• 9 God’s Finished Work
• 10 New Life in Christ
• 11 A New Lifestyle
• 12 Jesus the Christ
• 13 God’s Forever Family
• Notes
• Other Books by James W. Sire
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright Page